High school students will not need to take graduation exams?

According to the draft of the General Education Program just announced by the Ministry of Education and Training, students do not need to take exams but accumulate points to graduate.

On the afternoon of April 12, the Ministry of Education and Training officially announced the draft program for comprehensive general education.

The goal of this innovation is to create a fundamental and comprehensive change in the quality and effectiveness of general education; combine teaching literacy, teaching people and career orientation, contributing to transforming an education system that focuses on knowledge transfer to an education system that comprehensively develops both qualities and abilities, harmonizes morality, intelligence, physique and aesthetics, and promotes the potential role of each student.

Professor Nguyen Minh Thuyet, Editor-in-Chief of General Education Program.

Professor Nguyen Minh Thuyet said that the new education program is built with the orientation of developing qualities and abilities, creating a learning and training environment to help learners accumulate solid general knowledge, know how to effectively apply knowledge to life and enhance self-study ability, have a suitable career orientation, know how to build social relationships, have a rich personality, character and spiritual life.

There will be many new subjects.

According to the draft, subjects are built in a highly integrated direction in lower grades and gradually differentiated in upper grades, including 4 groups:

A compulsory subject is a subject that every student must take;

Compulsory subjects with differentiation are designed into topics, some topics all students must learn, some topics students can choose according to their wishes and the conditions of the institution;

Elective subjects are subjects that students have the right to choose according to their interests, strengths, and career orientation;

Compulsory elective subjects are subjects that students are required to choose from a group of prescribed career-oriented subjects in grades 11 and 12.

In particular, the program will have some new subjects such as Life around us, Social studies, Nature studies, Technology studies, Creative experiential activities. For middle and high school levels, there will be some new subjects such as Natural sciences, Arts, Creative experiential activities.

For high school level, there are subjects of Economic Education and Law. In addition, ethnic minority languages ​​and second foreign languages ​​are also included in the group of elective subjects in the new education program.

Explaining more clearly about these subjects, Professor Nguyen Minh Thuyet, Editor-in-Chief of the General Education Program, said that the new subjects in the subject system are not only different in name but also in content. The difference compared to the current program is that the subject content will be closer, more practical, and increase practice and application.

Specifically, the Creative Experience Activity subject is essentially practice, applying knowledge and research into social activities and serving the community. Therefore, students do not only learn theory but also need to really focus on practice.

Creative experiential activities are integrated, students not only apply good knowledge and skills of a subject but also need to apply practical knowledge in life to solve problems.

To implement the changes in the program, the representative of the Ministry of Education and Training said that the Ministry is promoting the training of teachers to suit the integrated training direction. Teachers who are currently teaching will be sent for retraining to be able to teach the new program.

Students will not need to take graduation exams?

One of the new points of the draft is the change in the assessment method. Professor Nguyen Minh Thuyet said that currently, the Ministry of Education and Training has assigned the Department of Secondary Education, the Department of Testing and Education Quality Assessment, in coordination with the General Education Program Development Board to research and propose a roadmap for innovation in the high school graduation assessment when this program is implemented. At the same time, the Ministry also affirmed that from now until 2020, the form of the national high school exam will be stabilized.

A representative of the Ministry of Education and Training said that in the new assessment method, to be granted a high school diploma, students do not have to take the national high school exam as at present, but graduation will depend on periodic assessments organized by the Department of Education. Students who complete the subjects and accumulate enough assessment results according to the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training will be granted a high school diploma.

“Schools can assign students research projects. When they do well on such research projects, students will get good grades and accumulate enough points to graduate, without necessarily having to take exams like at present,” Professor Thuyet further explained.

As for large-scale assessments at national and local levels, they will only be conducted to serve the management of teaching and learning activities, program development and education quality improvement. These large-scale assessments will be organized by national or provincial-level quality assessment organizations.

In addition to the above two forms, the draft also mentions regular assessment, organized by the subject teacher. This assessment will be based on the assessment results of the teacher, the student's parents, the student being assessed and other students in the group and class.

Professor Nguyen Minh Thuyet said that, in the face of profound changes in society, educational innovation to improve the quality of human resources, equipping future generations with a solid cultural foundation and high adaptability to all changes in nature and society is a global need. In particular, to fundamentally innovate teaching and learning methods, examinations and assessments also need to be adjusted to achieve high efficiency./.

According to VOV